Copywriters Podcast

If you’ve ever wondered what a metaphor is and how to use metaphors in your copy, today you will get your questions answered. Because we have a guest who I consider to be the reigning expert on the question, Anne Miller. She’s author of “The Tall Lady With The Iceberg.” For my money, it is the best book ever written on how to use metaphors to sell, to explain, and to win people over. Anne understands and teaches this information better than anyone else I’ve ever seen. She’s also a coach, speaker and seminar leader. Her huge client list ranges from Columbia University and The Wall Street Journal to Revlon, Citibank and Yahoo. As well as clients in Australia, South America, Europe and Asia. Dozens and dozens of household names and major niche organizations. For us in the copywriting world, Anne’s expertise in creating and using metaphors is what excites me the most. Many copywriters and business owners use metaphors, but not too many people do it all that well. And that’s about to change today. Anne covers

Today we’re back with Peter Visser, who has developed an impressive business with partners. It’s an online education business that teaches people how to trade in the stock and Forex markets. What I found so interesting, and I think you will find it interesting too, is his marketing approach. While it seems typical at first glance, as you start to look into it a little further, it’s not typical at all. In last week’s show, we talked about how he sells to a webinar with ads he says are “‘zero-claim,’ so they always pass compliance.” The ads go to a webinar that has no sales pitch, as Peter describes it. The webinars have generated six figures a month for the last year. From there, he has a copy strategy using one-to-one emails, and a particular way of writing copy that doesn’t risk the wrath of the regulators. Today we’ll talk about the second part of his funnel -- the pitch his company uses to qualify leads, and his overall approach for writing highly persuasive copy without making any claims. Peter tel

Today our guest is Peter Visser, who has developed an impressive business with partners. It’s an online education business that teaches people how to trade in the stock and Forex markets. What I found so interesting, and I think you will find it interesting too, is his marketing approach. While it seems typical at first glance, as you start to look into it a little further, it’s not typical at all. He sells to a webinar with ads he says are “‘zero-claim,’ so they always pass compliance.” The ads go to a webinar that has no sales pitch, as Peter describes it. The webinars have generated six figures a month for the last year. From there, he has a copy strategy using one-to-one emails, and a particular way of writing copy that doesn’t risk the wrath of the regulators. Today we’ll talk about the lead generation process, and the pitch-free webinars themselves. Peter has generously agreed to come back next week to tell us in detail about how he gets customers, once they’ve watched the webinar. Here is what

We’re back with top copywriter Mike Pavlish for part two of his in-depth information on video sales letters that sell like crazy. And Mike should know. He’s written dozens of VSLs that have brought in 10 million dollars or more. In fact, over the last 30 years, Mike’s copy has brought in three-quarters of a billion dollars in sales. And his work is still bringing in the big bucks today. I want to share with you something from last week, because it’s well worth repeating. High-powered entrepreneur Alvin Huang says this: “We’ve tested Mike Pavlish’s copywriting agains 5 other A-list copywriters, including many of the top names in the world for sales letters and VSLs. Mike’s copy has won every single time. For us, Mike Pavlish has been the Steph Curry of copywriters.” But Mike may be an even better teacher than Steph. I know I learned a lot from him last week and have even used some of it for a VSL between then and today. To review, last week Mike gave us some great tips on doing research for a winning VSL

Our returning champion is superstar copywriter Mike Pavlish, and even though this is Copywriters Podcast, I’m not exaggerating when I say “superstar.” Mike’s been at it for over 30 years, and his copy has sold three-quarters of a billion dollars in products and services. Because Mike is going to give us some closely-held secrets about VSLs that sell like crazy, you ought to hear what one of his clients says about Mike. I happen to know this client, because he flew over from Singapore nearly 10 years ago to attend a seminar I had organized. His name is Alvin Huang and listen to what he has to say: “We’ve tested Mike Pavlish’s copywriting agains 5 other A-list copywriters, including many of the top names in the world for sales letters and VSLs. Mike’s copy has won every single time. For us, Mike Pavlish has been the Steph Curry of copywriters.” You know, there’s only one way to get a testimonial like that, and that way is to earn it with results. So we’ve talked Mike into sharing some ideas with us about ho

For a lot of us, the hardest part of writing copy is getting started. Today we’re going to dive into some very handy tips from Old Master John Caples. He is, of course, famous for his ad which has the headline, “They Laughed When I Sat Down at the Piano… but When I Began To Play… ” Caples was what we would call today a data-driven marketer. He made his choices based on test results as much as anything else. He was highly successful and author of some of the best books every written on direct response marketing. In “Tested Advertising Methods,” he has an entire chapter devoted to seven proven ways to start your copy. Imagine how much easier it will be to write if you have some sure-fire ways to get started. That’s what today’s show is about. Now, to come up with these seven techniques, John Caples didn’t brainstorm a bunch of ways to start copy. He didn’t even draw on his massive, successful experience as a copywriter and a copy chief for six of them. No, for this chapter, he did something better. He foun

How would you like to DOUBLE your conversions after prospect opt-in for a lead magnet? I mean… who wouldn’t like that, right? Now one thing that keeps us, as direct marketers, from reaching new heights, is our ingrown conservatism. Which is normally a good thing. When something works, we stick to it. Other people in marketing and advertising often seem to compete to see how much money they can waste by being “creative” and trying out whatever comes to mind in the moment. Meanwhile, direct marketers see their job as making money for their clients. So we tend to stay focused on what has proven to work in the past. And most of the time, it’s a good idea. But sometimes, sticking too narrowly to the tried-and-true can box us in. We have to balance our data-driven decisions with breakthrough innovations that could still conceivably work within the bounds of direct marketing. Enter Jason Strachan. He’s our returning champion today. Jason is a bold copywriter and marketer who’s willing to jump out of the box t

Most everyone accepts that stories are THE best way to grab and hold someone’s attention. But does that mean ANY story you use in your copy will help you with your sales? A lot of people seem to have never asked or considered that question. Today we dig into it. You see, Joseph Campbell’s 1949 book “The Hero with a Thousand Faces” eventually launched a revolution in storytelling. Especially among professional storytellers. Campbell’s idea of The Hero’s Journey has become accepted truth as THE way to tell a story for many people. Is that really true in copy? We take a careful look at this question today. And we come up with some answers so you don’t make the mistake I’ve seen so many copywriters make with their stories. I want to say up-front that I am not against Hero’s Journey stories. I have spent a large part of my life studying them and an even larger part of my life reading, watching and enjoying them. My main point today is that you should use them as they were intended to be used, and where they

Our guest today is a true A-List Copywriter. Doug D’Anna has written for just about about any major direct mail publisher you can think of. His client list includes Agora, Boardroom, Forbes, Prevention Health Books, Personal Finance, and dozens of other big-ticket clients. Like just about every other copywriters starting out, Doug was severely underpaid for his work at first. He turned that around on a project that earned him one-quarter million dollars in royalties about 30 years ago. He kept on going from there, and he’ll tell us all about that today. What does it take to bring in the big bucks in copywriting? Doug has figured it out. He’s also discovered how to get some pretty impressive public endorsements, like this one from legendary copywriter Gary Bencivenga: “Writers who can consistently create powerful direct marketing campaigns are as rare as trumpeter swans. I know of only about six in the entire country. Doug D'Anna is on that short list of star writers I never hesitate to recommend.” Today,

Our guest today is Joshua Lee Henry, a high-powered copywriter with a very interesting career before he started writing copy. That began 12 years ago, when Joshua wrote fundraising letters for victims of the 2010 earthquake in Haiti. At the time, he was also a pastor for a megachurch with more than 5,000 members. Fast forward to 2018, when Joshua started freelancing and wrote for big names including Jay Abraham, Brian Tracy and the Zig Ziglar corporation. Like a number of high-performing copywriters, Joshua moved under the umbrella of Agora, where he has written promotions that have made millions. These days, he is copy chief for Money & Markets, an imprint of Agora’s fast-growing Banyan Hill company. After I spoke at Brian Kurtz’s mastermind a few weeks ago, where Joshua had also spoken, Joshua reached out to me with an idea that was truly mind-boggling: How to structure a lead that truly gets and keeps 100% of a qualified prospect’s intention. I’m not sure he put it exactly that way, but that’s wha

Today’s show is our attempt to answer this question: How do you add more impact to every single sentence? It started last week when I read this article from The Economist. It’s a British magazine, and it used to be my favorite. I hardly read it at all anymore. But… I was scrolling through Twitter and the AKA, also called the All-Knowing Algorithm, served up an ad for an article in The Economist with the headline, “What to Read To Become a Better Writer.” So, I clicked. You know, many people say that the AKA knows even more than Google! The article starts with a very strange picture. Three women at an outdoor café. Two are having a drink, laughing, having a great time. The third one is writing on an old-fashioned portable manual typewriter. Scowling and trying desperately to concentrate while her friends are partying. I have always thought the British have a strange way of looking at things. The article recommends five books. I cherry-picked some tips from three of them that would be especially useful

If you’ve been a copywriter, a media buyer, or a business owner for a while, you have probably realized there are things that happen in this business that people don’t talk about a lot. At least publicly. I’m talking about stuff that you kinda wished you knew about ahead of time, so you wouldn’t be so floored when it happened to you. Copywriting and direct marketing make up a great business, and I’ve found most people, most of the time, are pretty decent. But not everybody all the time. And I know we generally like to be constructive and optimistic on this podcast. But I think it’s also valuable to know how things can go upside down or sideways. You can’t always avoid it, but you may be able to stop it or fix it before it gets worse. Or at least deal with it better than you might have before you knew about what we’re going to talk about today. Sometimes I think the best background for being a copywriter is having a previous life as a firefighter, an ER surgeon, or a hostage negotiator. Because on those oc

This is a unique edition of our Old Masters Series, because I knew this copywriter personally. It’s Joe Sugarman, and Joe passed away in March of this year. I was sad to see him go, as were thousands of others. Outside of the direct marketing world, Joe is known for his BluBlockers sunglasses, which he took to great success using infomercials. Joe also came up with the Batman credit card. He printed up a huge number, only to find DC comics wasn’t interested in selling them. So he gave them away at events. Joe was a fun guy. And as you’ll hear about in today’s show, quite a prankster from early in his life. Joe wrote a book called Triggers in 1999, and we looked at a few of the most powerful ideas in the book. The information in this value-packed book is familiar on a surface level to most copywriters and marketers, but Joe brings it to life in a unique way with some great stories. Each trigger, by the way, is a powerful copy element that will increase your conversions. I think the reason he calls them tr

Our guest today, Jason Strachan, went through a powerful turnaround over 10 years ago. He was deeply in debt, not doing especially well as a copywriter. He heard about Gary Bencivenga’s famous “Bencivenga 100” seminar in New York, but there was no way he could pull the money together to attend. However, when Gary offered the seminar on DVD, Jason moved heaven and earth, and might have missed a couple meals, to come up with the money to buy the recordings. And what he learned changed his life. Jason says, “I’ve always had this uncanny gift for assimilating new information when it interested me.” He put what he learned to work and his copy generated tens of millions for clients around the world. Fast forward to today. Jason has boiled down what he has learned over time into a formula made up of only 10 words, and written a book about it. I’ve reviewed the book, called The Magic Word Method.What I like about it is, any one of these words can be used, both as copy and as a strategic idea, to refresh and turbo

Our guest today has a unique vantage point in copywriting. As an executive at Boardroom for 34 years, Brian Kurtz worked with many of the most successful and famous copywriters of our time, including Gene Schwartz, Gary Bencivenga, and many others. As the guy in charge, Brian was responsible for selling well over one billion dollars’ worth of products, “$39 at a time,” to millions of people. Seven years ago, Brian started a second career writing books and running mastermind groups. As well as republishing old direct marketing classics. I’ve wanted to have Brian on the show for a long time, and I was thrilled when he agreed to talk about the copywriting legends he has worked with. If you’ve ever wondered what the people at the top of this game were and are like, today’s your lucky day. Brian’s here to tell you. Brian started out by zeroing-in on what the greats of yesteryear (and some of the superstars he worked with are very active today) do differently from other copywriters. We can all suppose, imagine,

He’s back -- and I’m talking about Copywriters Podcast’s very own, Nathan Fraser. Nathan’s out with a new book, Sales Funnel Cheat Codes. This is my favorite book of his so far, because it’s so right-on target and full of useful strategies and tactics for putting together a sales funnel that works. The book is chock-full of systems, funnel diagrams, strategy, and simple rules to save you from a lot of mistakes and help you make a lot more money. We had a lot to cover on today’s show. Here’s what I asked Nathan: - What led up to you writing this book? - What’s the worst-performing funnel you ever created? - What’s the best-performing funnel you’ve ever created? - You have an interesting statement in the book: “Advertising is the art of buying customers.” What do you mean by that? - You mentioned that how-to articles and product comparison articles are great places to run your ads. What did you say that? - Who was Monster and what did he teach you about how great ads work? - Could you give us some ti

OK, we’re back with part 2 of deep headline wisdom from Old Master John Caples and his book “Tested Advertising Methods,” originally published in 1932. Last week we covered the first half of his chapter called “Twenty-nine formulas for writing headlines,” and like I said last week, this chapter is pure gold and no fat. This week we cover the second half. There was simply too much in one chapter to cover it all in one show. Now these formulas are simple, and in most cases you have to do the heavy lifting. They are formulas, but not templates. He shows you where to start, which is always half the battle when you’re writing anything. So today we’re going to cover the second half of Chapter 5 in Caples’s landmark book, “Tested Advertising Methods,” 4th edition. Two groups of headline formulas in the second half of the chapter that, for me, are more fun and more interesting than the ones we covered last week. Don’t get me wrong. The ones we covered last week, which I summarized just a moment ago, are very pow

Today we go deep into the headline wisdom of Old Master John Caples and his book “Tested Advertising Methods,” originally published in 1932. What’s so important about this book for today’s show is, it contains a chapter called “Twenty-Nine Formulas For Writing Headlines,” and this chapter is pure gold, no fat. It’s hard to appreciate the immense value of what he says in this chapter. I had to go through it several times to make it into podcast material. It’s clear and simple, but it’s dense. In fact, there’s so much there that I couldn’t fit it into one podcast. We’d have to cover one formula a minute. Going that fast would make it incredibly hard to develop useful ideas. It would all go by in a blur. So today is Part 1. We’ll cover 14 formulas. And we’ll cover the other 15 next week. By the way, don’t get intimidated by the word “formulas.” While Caples is accurate in describing them that way, they’re MUCH easier to use and understand than you might imagine. Now the headline formulas are in the last o

Our Old Master today begins a chapter of one of his books with this question: How do you cope when readers do not believe what you have written? And, he answers it: You plug the gaps where belief leaks out. Sounds like a great plan, but it leads to two more questions: 1. What are those gaps? and 2. How do you plug them? Now what’s especially interesting about this Old Master is that he’s not a copywriter. But he is a very successful writer and, for my money, the best teacher of how to write fiction you can find anywhere. And, even more interesting -- the gaps where belief leaks out for fiction writers are largely the same ones that cause problems for copywriters. And so are the fixes. I’ve tweaked his ideas ever so slightly to make them a perfect fit for copywriters. Our Old Master was named Dwight Swain. We talked about five mistakes Dwight Swain identified in the chapter “The Dynamics of Disbelief” from his book “Creating Characters: How to Build Story People.” His main point in the chapter is,

Our guest today, Kyle Jordan, has a website where he breaks down online ad sequences. The series of breakdowns is called “Full Funnel Nudity.” We’ll get to that soon enough, but first, about Kyle: His first client five years ago was a technical marketing course company called Data Driven Marketing. As a copywriter and marketing strategist, Kyle increased the traffic to their website by about 400%; doubled the size of their email list in one year; and helped them come up with six new products. But most important, with this first client, Kyle learned the technical side of online marketing from a copywriter’s point of view, in a way that few others have. This know-how led to his specialty, which he calls Funnel Renovations. He has helped multiple clients rehab their funnels and double their sales, just by fixing the funnel alone. He’s also written for famous professional athletes and influencers -- always with the goal of growing the sales of the business. Kyle shared some tips with us today from in-the-tren